Guy left the blog. The blog turned 3 (note: growing up without a daddy and being neglected by a depressive mother was only supposed to be a joke, but the blog did suffer, methinks. Quite neglected this year it was. Sorry blog.)

So, note to boys everywhere. If you want to get a bevy of ladies to swoon and type at you, this is the (possibly prefab) email you should send them:

hello there.

im a bit of a dick, and search for myself online. largely but notentirely because im a dick. i read the thing you wrote about my showand as pathetic as this may well be, i wanted to say thankyou.

it gets tricky sometimes to keep doing stuff when the people who talkto you after or shout in the street have so clearly missed the wholefucking point so it was really lovely to read a complete understandingof the show. including all the stuff ive never been quite sure imarticulating, so. really. thanks a lot.

im pleased you like my friends too. and you seem to have excellentinstincts. so thats nice.

anyway.

sorry to bother you.

im a dick.

Sigh. BEST. EMAIL. EVER.

If, however, you want to make girls think ill of you, you can do what Oscar Humphries did, and send a generic hate email (subject line: You are a cunt…)

I got an extra job for a while, which seemed like a thrilling enterprise, lots of enthusiastic talk about “being on the ground floor of the digital revolution” (playing catch-up). I got a bip card that I could swipe across a red light and turn it green. It went ‘bip’ when it turned green. And then I could open the door and wander around SBS like I was meant to be there. However, the digital radio network for which we were making pilots became an increasingly theoretical prospect, but at least I realised that this life failure wasn’t actually my fault.

Failing uni, however, was my fault. I am now a uni drop-out. I felt entirely relieved when that happened, like I could quit stalling now and start my life. So now I have to make a life, unencumbered by inconsequential things like qualifications… So my future is wide open and LIMITED.

We won a grant for our archive project from the Victorian Women’s Trust. So stay tuned for an eight-part series using archive audio from the past 20 years of our show to give a potted history of, well, women talked to and issues talked about. It’s actually bloody interesting, like finding treasure (when the treasure is not scarce, is stored in chronological order on cassette and CD, to be cross-referenced and navigated using folders full of similarly ordered running sheets detailing content, guests, etc).

Made another Seeds Of Dissent calendar. PLEASE BUY ONE. If you don’t I will have to keep putting myself about in order to promote the thing. For example, made a fool of myself talking about it to a nice chap on RTR in Perth the other week. And will make a fool of myself again on 2SER this Tuesday. It’s actually horrible, being on the other side of an interview. I DON’T LIKE IT. WHY DO PEOPLE AGREE TO DO IT?

Marked the advance of civilisation by renting DVDs on the internet and receiving them in the mail (BigPond Movies), and devoting myself to illegally downloading exciting cultural treasures. Also, you know how eBay’s been around for like, ever? Well, this year I actually used it. And I got dresses and boots and went quite giddy over it. Expensive habit.

In other life changes, after a lifetime of detesting Earl Grey Tea, I woke up one day and bloody loved it. Weird.

NOW LET’S LIST, PEOPLE.

SONGS 2006

My iPod died at the start of this year, was out of warranty, so I got a new one. Therefore my Top 25 Most Played is a pretty accurate reflection of 2006’s musical obsessions.

These are the ones at the top of the list, My Top 3 Most Played Songs, 2006:

And I really must apologise to Guy for most ungraciously accepting the birthday gift he gave me (that being, Beyoncé’s B-Day album). I made a horrified face and may have gasped “NO” as he gave it to me. But Guy, I was wrong. I was so wrong. And your exemplary track record of superb birthday gifts is only burnished further, old chum.

Aside from the popular vote, I’d like to mention some other songs that I keenly enjoyed this year:

Various, Leonard Cohen: I’m Your ManNow, I love me a tribute album. Couldn’t do without Whiskeytown’s version of A Song For You, or Sheryl Crow and Emmylou Harris singing Juanita on the Gram Parson’s tribute album, or Clem Snide’s Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Your Grievience and Bright Eyes’ Devil Town on the Daniel Johnston album, or for that matter New Buffalo’s Four Seasons In One Day on She Will Have Her Way. Tribute albums can be great things. But as far as Leonard Cohen is concerned, I’ve encountered a wider problem that I hoped this album would fix, (and that, with the exception of Beth Orton singing Sisters Of Mercy, this album hasn’t fixed) in that I’ve never yet heard a cover of one of his songs that I prefer over the original, or enjoy in isolation from - or with reference to - the original. Ever. Truly, the original Hallelujah is a great thing, with a lovely drrring and a choir. Perhaps it’s not so suited to thoughtful/wistful montages, but it’s still better. I’m not saying don’t cover Leonard Cohen songs. By all means, persist. It’s just that I remain unsatisfied.

GIGS 2006

I didn’t go to nearly enough, but here they are, I believe chronologically:

I’ve discovered that I’m quite disconnected from the outrage I should be feeling when shows get dicked about. Stupid broadband - as necessary as running water though it may be – has removed me from the depressive rages of The People, who simply ask that good shows be put on TV and carried through to their conclusions. And I’m sorry Green Guide letter writers, but advising everyone to ‘get the DVD’ is not the solution. Making the TV networks program in a sane fashion is the solution. Stop dismissing The People’s concerns, you stinkingly smug TV-from-the-internet-instant-gratification brigade. You make me ashamed to be one of you.

I very much enjoyed the Glen Milne incident at the Walkleys. It was marvellous. But the surprise and glee were for me too shortlived, almost immediately being stomped on and sullied by, a) the stupid human feeling I involuntarily extended to Milne after seeing the dawning humiliation on his face as he was dragged off stage, and b) Stephen Mayne’s immediate killing of the fun through his determination to run fun into the ground by sheer force of his personality, a feat that went on for days and days afterwards. Thankfully, someone on Crikey has managed to say something that doesn’t irritate and enables the greatness of the incident to live on untarnished. So here’s to you, Mungo MacCallum, for writing:

Deadwood (seasons 1-2-3) [IT CAN’T BE OVER. Also, I hate Hearst. Hearst is a fucking cocksucker. If you know what he’s done, you’ll understand. IRREDEEMABLE.]Entourage (seasons 1-2-3) [SO ADDICTIVE]WeedsGilmore Girls (seasons 5-6-7)L Word (seasons 2-3) [Season 4 starting in America soon, YAY]The Office US (seasons 1-2-3) [This IS VERY GOOD. DO NOT DISMISS IT.]Extras (seasons 1-2) [GENIUS. Will expand on this after the list.]Mighty Boosh (season 2)Prison Break (seasons 1-2) [Season 1 ended badly. I mean, the prison blueprints are tattooed all over your freakin body and still you're left holding a blade to the warden's neck and running off on foot with the fuzz hot on your tail?? DUDE. Anyway, Season 2 begins slowly, but really gets going after a while, so persist.]Six Feet Under The West WingThe SopranosOzShamelessThe Civil WarFireflyMy Name Is EarlStrangers With CandyVeronica MarsLaguna Beach [initially watched it out of perplexion, thinking: But… why? I feel like I’m stuck listening to the dominant people in a group of friends repeat and repeat and repeat themselves. Why doesn’t someone scream “HE’S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU. ALSO, HE’S A DICK!” Also, what do you, ah, think about stuff? OTHER stuff... Nonetheless, I didn't stop watching]Daily Show [I love you]Letterman [now on Channel Ten. At reasonable times. In actual proximity to the original air date. CRAZY. Do we dare to dream that this means the end of Hotdogs? If the Uplate Game Show has been consigned to the scrap heap, and Quizmania is all that remains, I think this shows a certain level of order, as in, The Universe working according to the rule of ‘First The Worst, Second The Best, Third The One With The Hairy Chest’. You see, Uplate appeared first, and so is The Worst, Quizmania appeared second and is The Best, and Midnight Zoo appeared third, was scrapped first, and showed a lot of chest.]The OC [CANCELED. This season is our last. But Taylor Towsend is SO AWESOME.]Heroes [will be HUGE. I'll say it again, HUGE. And Hiro Nakamura is something to love]Ugly Betty [will also be HUGE. I've seen two episodes, and it's going swimmingly so far. Also, Maggie from Extras and Dawn from The Office are in it.]YouTube [but only for the TV clips, really. Not the real people.]

NOW, LET’S TALK ABOUT THE SECOND SEASON OF EXTRAS.It is a superb thing, managing to expertly mix extreme hilarity with true despair and humiliation. The clip below is from Episode 5, featuring Ian McKellan and Germaine Greer… an episode which, in my opinion, is the BEST EXTRAS EPISODE EVER. So adamant am I about this point that I carry the episode with me always, on the iPod, for those special occasions when I feel the need to invite humiliation on myself by snorting in public. To be repetitive, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant are genius men. Fo serious. Within Extras they have also written an alternate comedy series, a play, films, theme songs, and brilliant fake versions of real celebrities, and all these pieces work as entities themselves as well as entities within a larger joke and, and, and… well, to be trite, let’s just sigh and say OH, THE LEVELS. Anyway, within this Best Episode Ever is the following scene. I want you to watch it attentively and in full, because it contains A Glorious Achievement In The History Of Comedy – namely, a highly original reworking of the ‘spit out water in surprise’ gag. This achievement is made all the more glorious, in my opinion, by the fact that the usual ‘spit out water in surprise’ gag appears (and, to be frank, still works on me) in an earlier Extras episode, in the show-within-the-show that is Andy Millman’s soul-destroyer, “When The Whistle Blows” – a program defined by cheap humour, catchphrases, funny wigs and glasses, along with the occasional morsel of a good joke well-executed slipped in to make us sit up and imagine what survived from Andy’s original vision, or to worry that we could enjoy what is being presented as the worst kind of TV comedy. They play with us, you see. Therefore no, I don’t think I’m over-reading a jot when I commend these guys for first flagging what bad TV comedy does with spitting and water, before showing what they can do with spitting and water, which is, quite simply,

THE FUNNIEST THING, 2006:

FILM 2006

It bothered me that I mostly had unsatisfying conversations throughout the year about Brokeback Mountain. Conversations in which people would always qualify their response to it in what I felt were diminishing ways, eg. “Oh, it’s a universal love story, not a gay love story. You could substitute class or race or anything experiencing a difficulty of coming together and it would be just as apt.” On these occasions it’s my default to go to the Harvey Fierstein place, which from my recollection of the Celluloid Closet goes something like this, “Fuck you, it bloody is gay. To see it as universal requires an act of translation on your part, similar to that performed for so long by gay people when translating straight film to their own experience. Make no mistake, this film is fucking gay.” At Christmas, Brokeback came up again because we had the DVD lying around, and an uncle saw it and remarked, “Oh yes, I saw that. I only saw it because it was an in-flight movie. Otherwise I wouldn’t have watched it, obviously.” To which I was thinking, “Why the hell not? Didn’t you mark Brokeback Mountain Day? Didn’t everybody? And what is this ‘obviously’ business?”, but what I actually said was, “Really? I loved it. Takes a while to warm up and seems jarring at first but it bloody breaks your heart. Makes me cry. Fucking tragedy.” To which he responded, “Tragedy? Well, for the wives maybe.” To which my eyes widened, and I was thinking, “No no NO… I mean, yes, sure. But there are questions of degree here. For the wives, it’s a niggling feeling that something is missing, a kind of removed tragedy. But the intense, right up on your throat tragedy is the one experienced by the men, because they know exactly what they’re missing out on. There is no fucking distance from that.” But my dad stepped in to defuse any possibility that I might get ‘difficult’ with, “Well, I suppose the scenery is probably nice. Maybe I’ll watch it for the scenery.” Which made me want to crumple into a heap. Anyway, already reviewdy.

Just one more thing before we get to lists. Maurice was a film I watched and I wrote that it was based on an E.M. Forster novel I had never heard of. Thing is, Guy has. Heard of it, that is. In fact, he’s just finished his Masters thesis, in which he wrote a fucking excellent chapter on that very same Forster book. So now, a question: is it bad that I was basing all my feedback for Guy’s chapter on my memories of the film? TOO LATE NOW. But would YOU trust as a sounding board the person (me) who wrote this?:

“The film has a young Hugh Grant playing Clive, the boyfriend of Maurice. And they’re both at Cambridge (or Oxford), and it’s 1910 or thereabouts, and they discover their love and erotically stroke each other’s hair and hug electrically, but then have to hide and mute their love, which is sad. But then Hugh Grant caves like a bad chap, and marries a woman, and then becomes a silly person, extolling the wonders of women and how clever and nice they are, in a very forced and desperate way, to Maurice. ‘You really should get one of your own’, etc etc. But Maurice will have none of that, because Rupert Graves is lovely.”

Anyway.

These lists are of films I watched this year, irrespective of release dates.

A Prairie Home CompanionSheitanV For VendettaMatch PointThe Human StainLast Tango In ParisDirty Dancing 2: Havana NightsBeyond Beats And Rhymes: A Hip-Hop Head Weighs In On Manhood In Hip-Hop CultureNacho LibreThe Anniversary PartyBaadasssss!Breakfast At Tiffany’s

FILM 2006: The Awful

Unrequited Love [quite possibly the crappest movie ever and the lowlight of MIFF 2006]A Lot Like Love [Ashton Kutcher and Amanda Peet I thought would be a grand combination. I was wrong.]The Lake House2:37 [seriously, this was SO CRAP. AND IT WAS NOT A SERIOUS FILM. It felt so fake and emotionally cheap, except for that character who couldn’t control his bladder. Only the very unsophisticated could consider the ending to be clever. POOR.]AlexanderFlightplanSnakes On A Plane [Sure, it's a good title. I didn’t see it when it came out, as I began to feel something fabricated and exploitative about this being a movie “we” had made, what larks, eh. It seemed like the studio was screaming WE ARE SO IN ON THE JOKE WE’RE ALMOST COOL PEOPLE, THIS IS SILLY FUN, which made it all not so fun. But I rented it recently, and it’s, you know, nothin.]

THEATRE 2006

I Am My Own Wife.It was, quite simply, the best play I have ever seen.

“I Am My Own Wife tells of author Doug Wright's fascination with the life of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a German transvestite caught up in the great European dramas of the 20th century. Unlike many contemporaries, von Mahlsdorf survived the Nazi regime and its replacement in East Germany, the Soviet-dominated Communist dictatorship.”

Other great theatre-ish things were Ridiculusmus in Importance of Being Earnest, Demetri Martin in Dr Ernest Parrot Presents, Daniel Kitson in Weltanschauung, and David O’Doherty in Grown Up.

It has struck me that I may be undernourished, theatre-wise. I am embarking this year on a Melbourne Theatre Company subscription, so let’s see if I take to it, and whether I, you know, like plays and such. It begins with Don’s Party on Monday night.

THE AMERICAS 2006

Something political happened in America. John Kerry and some insane people provided a lesson in the importance of the word “us”. Especially in punchlines. Say it with me, “Get us stuck in Iraq. Get us stuck in Iraq.” His point was actually a good one. What is wrong with people? Why are they so crazy?

However, voters weren’t so crazy. And I think Stephen Colbert said it best, so let’s usher in the Brave New World and keep the dream alive before it becomes not as great and progressive and unwrong as we want it to be. But then, maybe it will be good?

But this is all stuff you know already. Now let me tell you of an American phenomenon with which you may not be so acquainted. My former 3CR co-host Bec moved to North Carolina this year, and has since had some delightful news to share, which I will now pass on to you. It has to do with thug fashion. See, for a while Bec was door-bitching, and she noticed that too many of the tough guys decked out in bling and driving pimped-out cars shared an element that was, shall we say, less than scary. And that element was this: Coogi t-shirts. That’s right, COOGI. So I have devised a plan to take over the gang scene in Charlotte, NC. It’s a pretty audacious power-play, but I think it will demonstrate a superior sartorial nerve that can only awe them into submission, these PUSSIES who only go as far as t-shirts. We have the resources, people. We can surely whup them, and leave them cowering in the wake of the force that is THIS MUCH BLING:

That town is ours for the taking, is all I’m saying.

So there. That’s 2006. It’s over with.

But 2007 is no bad thing. Indeed, it’s already shaping up to be pretty exciting. You see, tomorrow night, for the first time… GUY AND I WILL BE MEETING FOP.